Sunday, November 3, 2013

My HALLOWEEN Night

This has been, without contest, the best Halloween night in years. Anybody who knows me knows that Halloween is my favorite holiday and this year I decided to do something about it. So, I invited all my friends around for a scary movie evening.

Here's the banner I Frankensteined together from various sundry parts. Including some art I'm still working on...

The invites specified that costumes were "welcome but not mandatory". I decided to go all out and wear a costume that suited my physiognomy, here I am in full dress as Rowan Atkinsons silent comedian, Mr. Bean.

I brought the jacket and pants from a thrift store and the rest were things I had around the house, including the suitcase and Teddy. I searched all over the city to find a bear more like the one Bean has but couldn't. The one I used worked out actually, since it sat snuggly in my breast pocket.

Here's a novelty, a photo taken of me earlier in the year in another costume.

This is me dressed as some sort of villainous oil-baron. I particularly liked the double eyebrows. I think I look sort of like the bad-guy from 'There Will Be Blood.'

I didn't exepct anyone else would come in costume and I'd be the only turkey wearing one. But a couple of my friends came through, one dressed as everyones favorite internet boogeyman, Slenderman, and another dressed as the Mad Hatter. I wish I'd gotten a picture of us together!

The night went off with out a hitch, we gathered in the rumpus room with several sofas gathered around a coffee-table full of chocolate, chips, pizza, soda and beer with a big TV in the corner.

I played a DVD of Mr Bean to kill time until everyone arrived, at which point the program began. To start the night off, I played one of my favorite black and white and appropriately spooky cartoons 'Swing You Sinners'. I always think it's good to play a cartoon before the main feature.

The first movie of the night was a horror-cmedy I've been raving about recently, Mel Brooks 'Young Frankenstein'. Something Halloween related but with a screwball sense of humor to keep things light-hearted while the sun was still up.

Between one movie and another I like to play something fun and short, so next we watched Disneys short film 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow' based on Washington Irvings novel. Which I've raved about previously.

The next movie we watched was the remake of the horror standard 'Evil Dead'. I liked the original evil dead and LOVED the sequel which dove headfirst into insanity, so this remake which recieved moderate praise was just what we needed, something a little more intense but still fun in a crazy, gory, blood-splatter way.

Surprisingly, the original Evil Dead, in it's entirety, is available for free on YouTube, embedded below.

For our next cartoon interlude, we watched The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror IV, which includes three of their best segments and some of the best animation The Simpsons ever boasted, courtesy of David Silverman.

And for the last movie of the night we needed a movie that wasn't fun or silly. We needed something creepy and ultimately scary, so I picked C. Robert Cargills screenwriting debut film 'Sinister'

Cargill was a longtime reviewer for one of my favorite movie sites Spill.com and his since gone on to a very successful career as a writer of both screen and print.

Sinister was met with great reviews claiming it to be one of the bets horror films that year and showing a real understanding of how to play an audience like a piano.

It really freaked me and my guests out, that's for damn sure as mustard. So much so that to put everyone in a slightly giddier mood before switching out the lights before bed, we had an impromptu viewing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. The perfect palette cleanser!

My only regret is that we didn't get ANY Tick or Treaters this year! Granted we're on a dead-end street but that shouldn't stop kids from walking up to the door. And I was really looking forward to using this Tony the Tiger jack-o-lantern to hand out candy to kids.

Oh well, there's always next Halloween! How will I outdo myself next year...

I think episodes like Treehouse IV had just the right amount of stylish animation for an animated sitcom.Being an animated sitcom they don't want fully cartoon animation but little bits like the Homer insanity scene about really bring the show to life.

I never really got the point of animated sitcoms until relatively recently, which is part of the reason why I've been watching a lot more of them in my spare time. Why animate something that can be done in live action was my mindset for a very long time until I started realizing how the best ones have really done a lot to get people interested in animation.

They may not be that well drawn and often really crude, but at the end of the day, like Chris Allison once said, these shows still manage to entertain and make a ton of money. There are even certain things that can be done that would never be possible if all these shows were live action, IMO.

That doesn't go to say that I didn't love stuff like The Flintstones, The Jetsons or Top Cat growing up though I'm not sure how well they hold up in terms of the writing. I cared most about the great Ed Benedict designs in those and I had also heard a lot about what H-B tried doing with Wait Till Your Father Gets Home. I also remember watching Adult Swim and stuff like that as a kid and really anything that was on Cartoon Network then.